My Bittorrent program is µtorrent, and I was looking around in it at things I'd never looked at before, like the properties of my torrents. One of the options is a box you can check called 'Initial Seeding'. I seeded Phish 2004-06-21 with that box checked and it finished seeding rather quickly, however, it was a small show. I then seeded MMW 1995-10-14 with Inital Seeding checked and it seems to be seeding out very slowly, it is a much larger show though.What exactly does the Initial Seeding option do? Should I use it?

while i cant answer your 1st question i can answer the 2nd. i never you use this option, or the 'super seed' options in other clients.. is there a utorrent faq? check their website.. also the speed at which your torrent completes depends greatly on many things, most notably your upload speed and the leechers as well, plus if their ports are forwarded etc.

this is just a guess on my part but i think that theres a simple way to figure out how long it should take for a swarm to 'get going', ie. your upload speed times/divided by the total size of the torrent just a guess though

I did the same thing. Used to use BitTornado with super-seed and I missed it when I switched to utorrent.

I seeded a 50gig torrent and discovered the initial seeding halfway and switched to it. It really seemed as though I finished upping faster. I'm always going to use it from now on. You wind up sharing less redundant data until others have 100%.

I think the general rule is to use the option when you're the one posting the seed, since it'll get the data out there quicker, but if you're hopping on as a leecher, you don't want that option because you don't want to restrict what other leechers can get from you, you're just giving them what they need.

I've been using "initial seeding" for a while and been much happier with it as a form of seeding. Ideally it doesn't repeat as much of what it shares, but it can be a pitfall if you start giving a lot to a firewaller who doesn't share them back it will go slower. On average I'd say it moves just as fast and doesn't repeat as much so go for it